OPEN TODAY: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.

Tickets

Drawings

Illustration 9 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": The Temptation and Fall of Eve

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.10
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
10 x 8 3/16 in. (25.4 x 20.8 cm.)
Medium
watercolor and pen and back ink over traces of graphite on paper
Description
Blake pictures both Eve's fall and Adam's sudden consciousness of a profound disturbance in Eden. Eve stands before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and eats of its fruit (9:780-84). In the poem, she plucks the fruit from the tree, but Blake shows her accepting it from the serpent's mouth in a satanic parody of the innocent kiss of Adam and Eve in the fifth illustration. Eve's left hand, gently cradling the serpent's head as it had embraced Adam's in the fifth design, contributes to the strong sexual implications of this unholy union of woman and beast. Blake closely follows Milton's description of the serpent, balanced on a "Circular base of rising folds…/ Fold above fold a surging Maze, his Head/ Crested aloft, and Carbungle his Eyes;/ With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect/ Amidst his circling Spires" (9:499-502). Entwining the serpent around Eve's body is Blake's only addition to the scene, one that recalls Satan's serpent-bound form in the fourth and fifth designs. Blake first used this striking motif in the 1795 color printed drawing "Satan Exulting over Eve" (Butlin 1981, Nos. 291-92). The tree is "Loaden with fruit of fairest colors mixt,/ Ruddy and Gold" (9:577-78). Its tentacle-like roots contribute to the sense of entrapment and repeat in their jagged outline the lightning streaking through the stormy sky. This last motif is not necessarily implied by the text until the "Thunder" after Adam's fall (9:1002); but the dark clouds, roots, and lightning offer a visual correlative to Milton's statement, in the main passage illustrated, that "Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat/ Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe" (9:782-83). Adam and Eve had parted shortly before her fall ("The Argument" to Book 9). He stands in the middle distance with the "Garland" he had been making for Eve's "Tresses" draped over each hand (9:840-41). His gesture of surprise and visage show that "hee the falt'ring measure felt" (9:849). The rendering of Adam's back may be based on plate 23 in Alexander Browne's Ars Pictoria. [1] Blake's pencil sketch of a woman encircled by a serpent may be a preliminary version of Eve (Victoria and Albert Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 589). The woman in this drawing stands rigidly upright and is seen full face with the serpent touching her mouth; a few sketchy lines in the background suggest two or three trees. The sketch, and through it perhaps Eve in this Paradise Lost illustration, may have been adopted from a statue of Isis entwined with a snake, reproduced in Montfaucon's Antiquity Explained. [2] In Blake's tempera of ca. 1799-1800, "Eve Tempted by the Serpent" (Victoria and Albert Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 379), Adam sleeps while the gigantic snake coils behind and above Eve with the fatal fruit in its mouth. The portrayal of the serpent in this painting is clearly indebted to Milton's description, and the placement of the fruit is an important prelude to this watercolor, but the composition is otherwise unlike the Huntington illustration. In the Butts/Boston version, the tree trunk is formed of clustered branches spread out into roots at its base. The large thorns on trunk and roots recall the appearance of the tree in both version of the sixth illustration. The hillock beneath the roots is no longer bare, but covered with grassy vegetation. Adam has dropped the garland (9:892-93) which now lies on the ground just left of his left foot. The three bolts of lightning are larger and seemingly closer to the figures. The two bolts on the left pass behind Adam's hands; one points to his right foot. [3] The background foliage is lower and more clearly outlined. Notes 1. (London: Browne, 1669). This source is suggested by Baker 1940, 119-20 of the 1973 reprint. 2.(London: n.p., 1721), Supplement 2:Pl. 46. Blake may have studied the French edition (Paris, 1719) of this important work in William Hayley's library; see the auction catalogue of Hayley's books, Mr. Evans, 13-25 February 1821, lot 1854. Morton Paley has pointed to this same design in Montfaucon as a source for plate 46 of Blake's Jerusalem; see " 'Wonderful Originals' - Blake and Ancient Sculpture," in Blake in His Time 1978, 175. The association between Hecate and a serpent-drawn chariot is traditional; see Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk. 7 lines 290-92 of the Arthur Golding translation. Blake also pictures a moon goddess drawn by two serpents on plate 14 of his Job illustrations, first executed as a watercolor ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.14). 2.This source is suggested in Andrew Wilton, "Blake and the Antique," The British Museum Yearbook 1: The Classic Tradition (London: British Museum, 1976), 98. See also the serpent-entwined women on the Lady's chair in the fifth Comus design (Part I, section A, item a.5). For more suggested sources of this motif, see Mary Jackson, "Blake and Zoroastrianism," Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 11 (1977): 72-85. 3. Butlin 1978, 115, takes this configuration as a foreshadowing of Christ's "Stigmata and …Man's eventual salvation through the Crucifixion."
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
Satan, now fully assuming his serpent form, offers Eve the forbidden fruit. She is already within his coils, and the mouth-to-mouth posture suggests an erotic dimension to her seduction into disobedience. The roots of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil also suggest both threat and bondage. Adam stands innocently on the left, a garland for Eve in his hands.

You might also be interested in